What is Kali Linux and what are its top alternatives?
Kali Linux is a popular open-source penetration testing platform that is widely used by security professionals and enthusiasts. It is based on Debian and provides a wide range of tools for security testing, forensics, and reverse engineering. Key features include advanced penetration testing tools, a customizable interface, regular updates, and strong community support. However, some limitations of Kali Linux include a steep learning curve for beginners and the potential for misuse of the powerful tools it offers.
Parrot Security OS: Parrot Security OS is a Debian-based distribution designed for penetration testing, digital forensics, and privacy protection. It offers a user-friendly interface, a large repository of security tools, and strong privacy features. Pros include a clean and intuitive interface, frequent updates, and a focus on privacy. Cons include occasional stability issues and less extensive documentation compared to Kali Linux.
BackBox: BackBox is an Ubuntu-based distribution that focuses on providing a comprehensive set of tools for penetration testing, network analysis, and ethical hacking. Key features include a lightweight and customizable interface, fast performance, and a selection of pre-installed security tools. Pros include a user-friendly interface, strong community support, and regular updates. Cons include a smaller toolset compared to Kali Linux and limited customization options.
BlackArch Linux: BlackArch Linux is an Arch Linux-based distribution that specializes in providing a vast collection of penetration testing tools and security software. It offers a rolling release model, which ensures users have access to the latest tools and updates. Pros include a massive repository of tools, excellent documentation, and strong community support. Cons include a steeper learning curve for beginners and potential stability issues due to the bleeding-edge nature of the distribution.
ArchStrike: ArchStrike is another Arch Linux-based distribution that focuses on providing a curated collection of security and penetration testing tools. It aims to be lightweight, fast, and easy to use for security professionals and enthusiasts. Pros include a large selection of tools, a minimalist approach to the user interface, and active development. Cons include potential instability due to the rolling release model and a lack of official support compared to Kali Linux.
Security Onion: Security Onion is a Linux distribution specifically designed for network security monitoring, intrusion detection, and log management. It integrates several open-source tools like Suricata, Snort, and Zeek to create a comprehensive security platform. Pros include a focus on network security, pre-configured tools for quick deployment, and a user-friendly setup process. Cons include a narrower focus compared to Kali Linux and less emphasis on penetration testing capabilities.
Buscador: Buscador is a Linux distribution based on Xubuntu that is tailored for OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) investigations. It provides a customized interface and a selection of tools for conducting research and collecting information from open sources. Pros include a user-friendly environment for OSINT activities, pre-installed tools for data collection, and regular updates. Cons include a limited scope beyond OSINT investigations and potential issues with tool compatibility.
DEFT Linux: DEFT (Digital Evidence & Forensics Toolkit) Linux is a distribution for computer forensics, penetration testing, and incident response tasks. It includes a suite of digital forensics tools like Autopsy, Foremost, and Volatility for analyzing and recovering data from digital devices. Pros include a focus on digital forensics capabilities, a user-friendly interface, and tools for evidence acquisition and analysis. Cons include a narrower scope compared to Kali Linux and fewer penetration testing tools.
Caine: Caine (Computer Aided INvestigative Environment) is a Linux distribution designed for digital forensics, incident response, and data recovery tasks. It provides a comprehensive set of tools for analyzing and preserving digital evidence, including file carving, memory analysis, and network forensics. Pros include a focus on investigative tasks, a user-friendly interface, and documentation for forensic procedures. Cons include a less extensive toolset for penetration testing compared to Kali Linux and a specialized focus on forensic analysis.
Fedora Security Lab: Fedora Security Lab is an official Fedora spin that provides a platform for ethical hacking, penetration testing, and security auditing tasks. It includes a selection of security tools and utilities for analyzing vulnerabilities, performing security assessments, and conducting network audits. Pros include integration with the Fedora ecosystem, a focus on open-source software, and regular updates. Cons include a smaller toolset compared to Kali Linux and potential compatibility issues with certain hardware configurations.
NST (Network Security Toolkit): NST (Network Security Toolkit) is a Linux distribution based on Fedora that is targeted towards network security professionals and administrators. It includes a wide range of network security tools like Wireshark, Nmap, and Snort for monitoring, analyzing, and securing network traffic. Pros include a focus on network security tasks, a user-friendly interface, and tools for network monitoring and analysis. Cons include a narrower scope compared to Kali Linux and fewer tools for advanced penetration testing scenarios.
Top Alternatives to Kali Linux
- Ubuntu
Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It also means ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu operating system brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers. ...
- Arch Linux
A lightweight and flexible Linux distribution that tries to Keep It Simple.
- Linux
A clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance. ...
- Linux Mint
The purpose of Linux Mint is to produce a modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use. ...
- Debian
Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel or the FreeBSD kernel. Linux is a piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide. FreeBSD is an operating system including a kernel and other software. ...
- CentOS
The CentOS Project is a community-driven free software effort focused on delivering a robust open source ecosystem. For users, we offer a consistent manageable platform that suits a wide variety of deployments. For open source communities, we offer a solid, predictable base to build upon, along with extensive resources to build, test, release, and maintain their code. ...
- Raspbian
It is optimized for the Raspberry Pi hardware. It provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 35,000 packages, pre-compiled software bundled in a nice format for easy installation on your Raspberry Pi. ...
- JavaScript
JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles. ...
Kali Linux alternatives & related posts
- Free to use230
- Easy setup for testing discord bot96
- Gateway Linux Distro57
- Simple interface54
- Don't need driver installation in most cases9
- Open Source6
- Many active communities6
- Software Availability3
- Easy to custom3
- Many flavors/distros based on ubuntu2
- Lightweight container base OS1
- Great OotB Linux Shell Experience1
- Demanding system requirements5
- Adds overhead and unnecessary complexity over Debian4
- Snapd installed by default2
- Systemd1
related Ubuntu posts
I use Laravel because it's the most advances PHP framework out there, easy to maintain, easy to upgrade and most of all : easy to get a handle on, and to follow every new technology ! PhpStorm is our main software to code, as of simplicity and full range of tools for a modern application.
Google Analytics Analytics of course for a tailored analytics, Bulma as an innovative CSS framework, coupled with our Sass (Scss) pre-processor.
As of more basic stuff, we use HTML5, JavaScript (but with Vue.js too) and Webpack to handle the generation of all this.
To deploy, we set up Buddy to easily send the updates on our nginx / Ubuntu server, where it will connect to our GitHub Git private repository, pull and do all the operations needed with Deployer .
CloudFlare ensure the rapidity of distribution of our content, and Let's Encrypt the https certificate that is more than necessary when we'll want to sell some products with our Stripe api calls.
Asana is here to let us list all the functionalities, possibilities and ideas we want to implement.
This is my stack in Application & Data
JavaScript PHP HTML5 jQuery Redis Amazon EC2 Ubuntu Sass Vue.js Firebase Laravel Lumen Amazon RDS GraphQL MariaDB
My Utilities Tools
Google Analytics Postman Elasticsearch
My Devops Tools
Git GitHub GitLab npm Visual Studio Code Kibana Sentry BrowserStack
My Business Tools
Slack
Arch Linux
- Large Community17
- Package Manager15
- Customizable13
- Rolling Release12
- Arch User Repository11
- Bleeding Edge11
- Extensive Documentation10
- Arch Build System8
- X86_64 architecture supported7
- Can fix bugs yourself if you know how to4
- Systemd only4
- Only X86_64 architecture is offically supported3
- No Guided Installation1
- System maintenance1
- Unstable1
- Comparatively fewer offically supported packages1
related Arch Linux posts
- Go because it's easy and simple, facilitates collaboration , and also it's fast, scalable, powerful.
- Visual Studio Code because it has one of the most sophisticated Go language support plugins.
- Vim because it's Vim
- Git because it's Git
- Docker and Docker Compose because it's quick and easy to have reproducible builds/tests with them
- Arch Linux because Docker for Mac/Win is a disaster for the human nervous system, and Arch is the coolest Linux distro so far
- Stack Overflow because of Copy-Paste Driven Development
- JavaScript and Python when a something needs to be coded for yesterday
- PhpStorm because it saves me like 300 "Ctrl+F" key strokes a minute
- cURL because terminal all the way
I once used Ubuntu as my exclusive Linux distro, but then I decided to switch my primary operating system to Arch Linux.
While more difficult to install, Arch Linux offered more flexibility during the installation process which allowed me to customize my system to fit me perfectly. With Ubuntu, instead of installing everything i did want, I had to remove everything that I didn't need.
Linux
- Open Source17
- Free11
- Reliability8
- Safe5
related Linux posts
I use Visual Studio Code because at this time is a mature software and I can do practically everything using it.
It's free and open source: The project is hosted on GitHub and it’s free to download, fork, modify and contribute to the project.
Multi-platform: You can download binaries for different platforms, included Windows (x64), MacOS and Linux (
.rpm
and.deb
packages)LightWeight: It runs smoothly in different devices. It has an average memory and CPU usage. Starts almost immediately and it’s very stable.
Extended language support: Supports by default the majority of the most used languages and syntax like JavaScript, HTML, C#, Swift, Java, PHP, Python and others. Also, VS Code supports different file types associated to projects like
.ini
,.properties
, XML and JSON files.Integrated tools: Includes an integrated terminal, debugger, problem list and console output inspector. The project navigator sidebar is simple and powerful: you can manage your files and folders with ease. The command palette helps you find commands by text. The search widget has a powerful auto-complete feature to search and find your files.
Extensible and configurable: There are many extensions available for every language supported, including syntax highlighters, IntelliSense and code completion, and debuggers. There are also extension to manage application configuration and architecture like Docker and Jenkins.
Integrated with Git: You can visually manage your project repositories, pull, commit and push your changes, and easy conflict resolution.( there is support for SVN (Subversion) users by plugin)
We use G Suite because of its cheap costs, easy management/administration, Excellent DKIM score, and everything that comes with it. We switched from Microsoft Office 365 because it doesn't work on Linux which is our OS of choice. Furthermore, G Suite does not lack any of the features that Office365 had to offer, I'd even say it offers more.
Linux Mint
- Simple, Fast, Comfort and Easy to Use15
- Stable14
- Elegant12
- Good for beginners11
- Free to use10
- Out of the box3
- Reliable3
- Good software support1
- Easy to mess up with a few settings (like the panel)3
- Security breaches2
- Idiots can break it because it is open source1
related Linux Mint posts
I can't get xdebug to work properly with Visual Studio Code in Linux Mint. Please help me out. I have already tried the main steps but the debugger won't stop at breakpoints or show any error message. I cant do stepping or anything proper of a debugger. The extension is installed, and the firefox helper too. The xdebug.so is in the correct directory and php.ini has the entries according to the manual. What else can I do?
- Massively supported54
- Stable50
- Reliable21
- Aptitude9
- Customizable8
- It is free8
- Turnkey linux use it8
- Works on all architectures6
- Old versions of software10
- Can be difficult to set up on vanilla Debian2
related Debian posts
At labinator.com, we use HTML5, CSS 3, Sass, Vanilla.JS and PHP when building our premium WordPress themes and plugins. When writing our codes, we use Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code depending on the project. We run Manjaro and Debian operating systems in our office. Manjaro is a great desktop operating system for all range of tasks while Debian is a solid choice for servers.
WordPress became a very popular choice when it comes to content management systems and building websites. It is easy to learn and has a great community behind it. The high number of plugins as well that are available for WordPress allows any user to customize it depending on his/her needs.
For development, HTML5 with Sass is our go-to choice when building our themes.
Main Advantages Of Sass:
- It's CSS syntax friendly
- It offers variables
- It uses a nested syntax
- It includes mixins
- Great community and online support.
- Great documentation that is easy to read and follow.
As for PHP, we always thrive to use PHP 7.3+. After the introduction of PHP 7, the WordPress development process became more stable and reliable than before. If you a developer considering PHP 7.3+ for your project, it would be good to note the following benefits.
The Benefits Of Using PHP:
- Open Source.
- Highly Extendible.
- Easy to learn and read.
- Platform independent.
- Compatible with APACHE.
- Low development and maintenance cost.
- Great community and support.
- Detailed documentation that has everything you need!
Why PHP 7.3+?
- Flexible Heredoc & Nowdoc Syntaxes - Two key methods for defining strings within PHP. They also became easier to read and more reliable.
- A good boost in performance speed which is extremely important when it comes to WordPress development.
For your purposes, I recommend @Laravel, or even @Symfony or @Yii, or whatever. In your use case, a framework is 100% indicated, because it will cut your boilerplate in half or more, and you'll have a pre-fab organization for files, classes and so on. Personally, I am not a fan of Frameworks, because they tend to take over your project like cancer and trap you. But for an internal app to manage stuff, it's probably the best idea to use one (preferably one you like).
When doing internal apps, your best bet is to stick the essentials and basics, try Laravel with MySQL on a nice Debian virtual machine. Can't go wrong.
- Stable16
- Free to use9
- Reliable9
- Has epel packages6
- Good support6
- Great Community5
- I've moved from gentoo to centos2
- Yum is a horrible package manager1
related CentOS posts
Since #ATComputing is a vendor independent Linux and open source specialist, we do not have a favorite Linux distribution. We mainly use Ubuntu , Centos Debian , Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora during our daily work. These are also the distributions we see most often used in our customers environments.
For our #ci/cd training, we use an open source pipeline that is build around Visual Studio Code , Jenkins , VirtualBox , GitHub , Docker Kubernetes and Google Compute Engine.
For #ServerConfigurationAndAutomation, we have embraced and contributed to Ansible mainly because it is not only flexible and powerful, but also straightforward and easier to learn than some other (open source) solutions. On the other hand: we are not affraid of Puppet Labs and Chef either.
Currently, our most popular #programming #Language course is Python . The reason Python is so popular has to do with it's versatility, but also with its low complexity. This helps sysadmins to write scripts or simple programs to make their job less repetitive and automating things more fun. Python is also widely used to communicate with (REST) API's and for data analysis.
Hello guys
I am confused between choosing CentOS7 or centos8 for OpenStack tripleo undercloud deployment. Which one should I use? There is another option to use OpenStack, Ubuntu, or MicroStack.
We wanted to use this deployment to build our home cloud or private cloud infrastructure. I heard that centOS is always the best choice through a little research, but still not sure. As centos8 from Redhat is not supported for OpenStack tripleo deployments anymore, I had to upgrade to CentosStream.
- Runs well on rpi7
- Easy to use with little experience2
- Very Lightweight1
- Desktop enviroment is unstable4
- Uses ARMHF architecture, not commonly supported1
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JavaScript
- Can be used on frontend/backend1.7K
- It's everywhere1.5K
- Lots of great frameworks1.2K
- Fast898
- Light weight745
- Flexible425
- You can't get a device today that doesn't run js392
- Non-blocking i/o286
- Ubiquitousness237
- Expressive191
- Extended functionality to web pages55
- Relatively easy language49
- Executed on the client side46
- Relatively fast to the end user30
- Pure Javascript25
- Functional programming21
- Async15
- Full-stack13
- Setup is easy12
- Future Language of The Web12
- Its everywhere12
- Because I love functions11
- JavaScript is the New PHP11
- Like it or not, JS is part of the web standard10
- Expansive community9
- Everyone use it9
- Can be used in backend, frontend and DB9
- Easy9
- Most Popular Language in the World8
- Powerful8
- Can be used both as frontend and backend as well8
- For the good parts8
- No need to use PHP8
- Easy to hire developers8
- Agile, packages simple to use7
- Love-hate relationship7
- Photoshop has 3 JS runtimes built in7
- Evolution of C7
- It's fun7
- Hard not to use7
- Versitile7
- Its fun and fast7
- Nice7
- Popularized Class-Less Architecture & Lambdas7
- Supports lambdas and closures7
- It let's me use Babel & Typescript6
- Can be used on frontend/backend/Mobile/create PRO Ui6
- 1.6K Can be used on frontend/backend6
- Client side JS uses the visitors CPU to save Server Res6
- Easy to make something6
- Clojurescript5
- Promise relationship5
- Stockholm Syndrome5
- Function expressions are useful for callbacks5
- Scope manipulation5
- Everywhere5
- Client processing5
- What to add5
- Because it is so simple and lightweight4
- Only Programming language on browser4
- Test1
- Hard to learn1
- Test21
- Not the best1
- Easy to understand1
- Subskill #41
- Easy to learn1
- Hard 彤0
- A constant moving target, too much churn22
- Horribly inconsistent20
- Javascript is the New PHP15
- No ability to monitor memory utilitization9
- Shows Zero output in case of ANY error8
- Thinks strange results are better than errors7
- Can be ugly6
- No GitHub3
- Slow2
- HORRIBLE DOCUMENTS, faulty code, repo has bugs0
related JavaScript posts
Oof. I have truly hated JavaScript for a long time. Like, for over twenty years now. Like, since the Clinton administration. It's always been a nightmare to deal with all of the aspects of that silly language.
But wowza, things have changed. Tooling is just way, way better. I'm primarily web-oriented, and using React and Apollo together the past few years really opened my eyes to building rich apps. And I deeply apologize for using the phrase rich apps; I don't think I've ever said such Enterprisey words before.
But yeah, things are different now. I still love Rails, and still use it for a lot of apps I build. But it's that silly rich apps phrase that's the problem. Users have way more comprehensive expectations than they did even five years ago, and the JS community does a good job at building tools and tech that tackle the problems of making heavy, complicated UI and frontend work.
Obviously there's a lot of things happening here, so just saying "JavaScript isn't terrible" might encompass a huge amount of libraries and frameworks. But if you're like me, yeah, give things another shot- I'm somehow not hating on JavaScript anymore and... gulp... I kinda love it.
How Uber developed the open source, end-to-end distributed tracing Jaeger , now a CNCF project:
Distributed tracing is quickly becoming a must-have component in the tools that organizations use to monitor their complex, microservice-based architectures. At Uber, our open source distributed tracing system Jaeger saw large-scale internal adoption throughout 2016, integrated into hundreds of microservices and now recording thousands of traces every second.
Here is the story of how we got here, from investigating off-the-shelf solutions like Zipkin, to why we switched from pull to push architecture, and how distributed tracing will continue to evolve:
https://eng.uber.com/distributed-tracing/
(GitHub Pages : https://www.jaegertracing.io/, GitHub: https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger)
Bindings/Operator: Python Java Node.js Go C++ Kubernetes JavaScript OpenShift C# Apache Spark